The Temple clock had announced in soft and confidential tones that it was a quarter to seven, in which statement it was stoutly supported by its colleague on our mantelpiece, and still there was no sign of Thorndyke.  It was really a little strange, for he was the soul of punctuality, and moreover, his engagements were of such a kind as rendered punctuality possible.  I was burning with impatience to impart my news to him, and this fact, together with the ghostly proceedings of Polton, worked me up to a state of nervous tension that rendered either rest or thought equally impossible.  I looked out of the window at the lamp below, glaring redly through the fog, and then, opening the door, went out on to the landing to listen.

At this moment Polton made a silent appearance on the stairs leading from the laboratory, giving me quite a start; and I was about to retire into the room when my ear caught the tinkle of a hansom approaching from Paper Buildings.

The vehicle drew nearer, and at length stopped opposite the house, on which Polton slid down the stairs with the agility of a harlequin.  A few moments later I heard his voice ascending from the hall—­

“I do hope, sir, you’re not much hurt?”

I ran down the stairs and met Thorndyke coming up slowly with his right hand on Polton’s shoulder.  His clothes were muddy, his left arm was in a sling, and a black handkerchief under his hat evidently concealed a bandage.

“I am not really hurt at all,” Thorndyke replied cheerily, “though very disreputable to look at.  Just came a cropper in the mud, Jervis,” he added, as he noted my dismayed expression.  “Dinner and a clothes-brush are what I chiefly need.”  Nevertheless, he looked very pale and shaken when he came into the light on the landing, and he sank into his easy-chair in the limp manner of a man either very weak or very fatigued.

“How did it happen?” I asked when Polton had crept away on tip-toe to make ready for dinner.

Thorndyke looked round to make sure that his henchman had departed, and said—­

“A queer affair, Jervis; a very odd affair indeed.  I was coming up from the Borough, picking my way mighty carefully across the road on account of the greasy, slippery mud, and had just reached the foot of London Bridge when I heard a heavy lorry coming down the slope a good deal too fast, considering that it was impossible to see more than a dozen yards ahead, and I stopped on the kerb to see it safely past.  Just as the horses emerged from the fog, a man came up behind and lurched violently against me and, strangely enough, at the same moment passed his foot in front of mine.  Of course I went sprawling into the road right in front of the lorry.  The horses came stamping and sliding straight on to me, and, before I could wriggle out of the way, the hoof of one of them smashed in my hat—­that was a new one that I came home in—­and half-stunned me.  Then the near wheel struck my head, making a dirty little scalp wound, and pinned down my sleeve so that I couldn’t pull away my arm, which is consequently barked all the way down.  It was a mighty near thing, Jervis; another inch or two and I should have been rolled out as flat as a starfish.”